When music and

by Judy Hill science converge

f I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician,” said Albert Einstein, who nicknamed his violin Lina and was fa- mously ardent about Mozart and Bach. “I often think in music,” he added. “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” The Nobelist was hardly alone among his fellow scientists. Music and science, it seems, have gone hand in hand through the ages: physicist Richard Feynman was an avid bongo player; Russian chemist Alexander Borodin composed Romantic-period mu- sic; and Queen’s guitarist, Brian May, is a respected astrophysicist. Here at Caltech, a sizable number of scientists also wield a bow, pluck a string, or tickle the ivo- ries. Two in particular have forged powerful links between their research and their musicianship.

30 Summer 2019 Caltech magazine magazine.caltech.edu 31 Nine hypothesis. That’s why you can go out and make art or planetary scientist Konstantin Batygin (MS ’10, Batygin met Marturet when both were selected for the out of it.” PhD ’12), the parallels between music and science Genius: 100 Visions project, which collected the insights are clear. “If you look at a scientific idea, it’s just a and visions of top minds around the world in celebration To get ready for Miami, Batygin practiced like never riff,” he says. “It’s a melody, but it’s not attached to of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of before, since, he says. “It turns out being pretty good at Les Deutsch anything. The way that a scientific idea grows into a hy- relativity in 2015. A mutual acquaintance mentioned the rock ’n’ roll isn’t the same as playing in the symphony.” (BS ’76, MS ’77, PhD ’80) pothesis, into a theory, requires all of this additional work ninth-planet hypothesis to Marturet, and the conductor Music has always been part of Batygin’s Deputy Director, Interplanetary Network, JPL where you take an idea, you build it, and you see how it seized on the idea of writing a Planet Nine symphony as life. His father, Yuri, also a scientist, had a Instruments played/owned: Organ, trum- fits in. It’s the same with music.” an extension to Gustav Holst’s Planets suite. band, so Batygin grew up watching him pet, saxophone, clarinet, piccolo, flute, drums, Batygin has been in the spotlight in recent years for Batygin was not completely surprised that Marturet play guitar, though, as he notes, “it wasn’t violin, banjo, piano, French horn, euphonium his work with Caltech colleague Mike Brown that hy- felt compelled to write a new symphony after learning really proper to play rock music in the pothesized the existence of an as-yet-undiscovered ninth about a hypothetical ninth planet. “I think there is, Soviet Union.” When the family moved Caltech connections: I’ve played just about planet (“Planet Nine”) in the solar system. That work is among classical musicians, a thing about the planets and from Moscow to Tokyo, he attended a every instrument in the Caltech-Occidental deeply exciting to Batygin, but recently he has been just the Planets suite,” he says. “The other intriguing thing Japanese elementary school and, as he Wind Orchestra. I’ve played most of the instru- as excited about classical music. about Planet Nine is that it has this remarkable property recalls, basically pretended to play the ments also in the Jazz Band. Starting in 1974, keyboard amid a “bunch of third graders Batygin’s forte, he will quickly point out, is not classi- where people can resonate with it. It’s something that I’ve been the Caltech organist playing at every who were actual virtuosos, just perfect, on cal music. With his band Seventh Season, he plays hard astounded me when we first wrote the original paper. It commencement. every instrument.” rock, a genre he has passionately espoused since around didn’t just get media attention; it seemed to me that people I’ve also done a lot of composing for Caltech the age of 11. Nevertheless, earlier this spring he traveled were truly captivated. I think it’s at the right intersection He started to learn guitar as a preteen, over the years. For our 100th anniversary, to Florida to play guitar on a piece of music written by of mysterious and tangible. It combines those two curiosi- because, he explains, “that’s the time when I composed a Centennial Suite, which is a Miami Symphony Orchestra conductor Eduardo Marturet ties of the human condition in such a nice way, the notion your brain starts to have weird hormones, four-movement suite for band that was per- and inspired by Planet Nine. that there’s something there in the solar system, in our and you need to express yourself through formed at Bandorama. In 2017, I did a 20-minute home solar system, that has yet to be discovered. I think A minor, primarily.” That was also when he piece for Concert Band in honor of the 40th because of that, there’s a real magnetism to the Planet discovered Metallica and became fascinat- anniversary of Voyager. ed with heavy metal, both for its technical Konstantin Batygin and Lucy Jones share notes in Beckman Auditorium. challenges and the way it pushed the art Outside of Caltech: I also play in a professional Dixieland band form to the next level. For a while, he says, called the Night Blooming Jazzmen. I wish I’d thought of that name. he had no other interests than to start the next Metallica. Musical background: I started organ lessons when I was 11. My On the off chance that plan A did not work out, and father was a chief scientist at North American Aviation at the time and with a natural affinity for physics, he enrolled at UC Santa they were looking for something to apply their electronics toward in Cruz. “I ended up absolutely falling in love with what I the commercial market. He proposed they work on a digital electronic do now,” he says. He attributes that to his undergraduate organ, something that didn’t exist then. In around 1970, the product was adviser, Greg Loughlin, who also, as it happened, played released by Allen Organ Company. in a band. “I ended up doing cool research and published a paper with Greg in my final year of undergrad,” Batygin Solos vs. teamwork: As an organist, typically you play alone and says. Graduate school at Caltech (he received his PhD you don’t get that experience of playing with a group, so playing in the in planetary science, working with Dave Stevenson and bands is important to me. The same is true in doing research. There are Mike Brown) followed, and he never looked back. He also things that you do by yourself, and there are things that you do as part kept playing. of a team. The two fields are very analogous. “Music isn’t just a way to relax, it’s a way to keep the imagination part of your brain going in ways that are very correlated with science,” says Batygin. “Of course, they’re distinct, but the process through which you come up with an idea and then let it take hold and develop in your mind is exactly the same. I take the same approach to writing scientific papers as I do to writing music.” Seventh Season plays locally at Pasadena’s Old Towne Pub. “The spirit of rock ’n’ roll is very much alive in the Old Towne. The symphony is never going to perform in the Old Towne, but I had this remarkable opportunity to bridge the divide. Who would ever have thought that being a professor at Caltech would lead me to playing in the symphony?”

32 Summer 2019 Caltech magazine magazine.caltech.edu 33 chromatic; it wasn’t music, just random notes.” She was Julia Greer s one of the world’s most influential seismologists, interested in creating something more musical. Her first Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering Lucy Jones is a familiar face to residents of the efforts ended up in the trash can, but the idea lingered, and when she retired from the USGS in 2016 she picked Southland. But while her post-quake TV appear- Instrument: Piano ances have been seen around the world, she is less it up again, dividing her time between composing and writing her most recent book, The Big Ones: How Natural well known as a dedicated player of the viola da gamba, a Caltech group: A trio with cellist Monica Kohler and violinist Tony Disasters Have Shaped Us. stringed instrument similar to the cello. Kukavica (Class of ’21). Jones had studied a 17th-century musical genre called Recently, Jones, who was a seismol- In Nomine, in which one instrument plays Why music is still part of her life: I’ve been playing since I was “As we go through the really ogist with the United States Geological a simple theme, or base song (from the 5 or 6. I grew up in Moscow. Every little Russian girl has to take piano Survey (USGS) for 33 years and is now Latin phrase cantus firmus), and other lessons. I just never quit. As amateurs, we have the best of both worlds. accelerated times of rising a visiting associate at Caltech, com- instruments play more complex lines in Because we’ve built the tool set to get to the bined her scientific knowledge with counterpoint. She used that form for her technical level that allows us to actually produce temperatures ... I tried to her musical affinity, creating a piece of composition on climate change, taking the the kind of sound that we want to hear, it’s en- music based on climate-science data. temperature data and turning it into the joyable. When you don’t quit, you preserve that make it sound really frantic.” She then performed the work with base song. skill. You preserve the mechanics of your fingers, three fellow gamba players at L.A.’s your digits. Natural History Museum on February 1, 2019. “It’s a little long,” says Jones of the final composition, “because it’s 138 years’ Paul Asimow Jones credits her musicianship to her Welsh family. Why she didn’t become a professional worth of data, since 1880, one measure per (MS ’93; PhD ’97) Growing up, she says, “my grandparents would come over musician: I just always had something else year.” Back when she first composed the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Geology and Geochemistry for dinner, and instead of saying grace, we’d sing it. In going on. And I was in a math high school as piece, she had scaled it over three octaves, parts. A cappella. It was just part of our family life.” Jones well. In Moscow, you have to make the decision a wide dynamic range. “You’re in the lower Instruments: Piano, flute, tuba, conducting took up the cello in fourth grade and discovered chamber whether or not you’re going to be a professional octave for the first 60 years, and then music in high school, beginning a lifelong love of small- when you’re 14. It’s very young, and I wasn’t Wind orchestra you’re in the next octave for the next 50 Caltech groups: group ensembles. ready for that. years, and then it hits the top of the third As an undergraduate at Brown, studying physics and His Caltech musical debut: I auditioned for the concert band on octave in 1998. Then it bounces around for Musical highlight of her life: When I lived Chinese, she stumbled across a Renaissance-music group flute, and because I knew how to conduct [then band director] Bill Bing a while below that. Nineteen ninety-eight in the Bay Area, I was the principal pianist for and took along her recorder to audition. Once the adviser gave me the wonderful privilege of being permanent guest conductor was just one of those freak hot years.” the Redwood Symphony. I got to play Brahms’s second piano concerto and doing one piece of my own choosing discovered she was a cello player, he offered When she came back to the piece and with them and that was probably the highlight of my whole career. It was every semester. to pay for her to take classes on the viola da had the opportunity to update it with new data, she real- amazing to play. That’s a monumental piece. And it’s so beautiful. gamba. “My joke was that once I discovered ized it had gone up another fifth. “In 2016, it’s off the end On working with Glenn Price as band the 17th century I never wanted to return to How music helps her be a better scientist: It allows your mind of the fingerboard,” she notes. “Luckily it’s a harmonic, so director: He’s taken a good group and made the 20th. It’s music I love, and the gamba gave to relax. We’re all of us type A, overachieving academics. We’re con- you can play it just by resting your finger on it. It makes it outstanding, with more ambitious program- me a chance to do small-group work.” stantly thinking about work and about our students and about proposals. it really dramatic how much it’s changed at the end.” ming, larger-scale works, and higher expec- While at the USGS, she played on and off When you play the piano, it allows your mind to let go. It’s just me and As a scientist who studies data about our planet, tations. Now I definitely have to show up for with Caltech’s chamber music program: less the universe and the music. Jones says that when she looks at the figures on climate rehearsal every week prepared and on my best when her children were small, more once change she is “terrified” by what she sees and “appalled” game, because he can tell if you’re not! they were grown. She began attending Viola at the lack of response. “We aren’t scared enough,” she da Gamba Society of America meetings and I’m eternally insists. One of her goals, then, was to convey feelings Why it’s worth his time: joined the Los Angeles Baroque, a communi- grateful to be here at Caltech because the about the data in musical form. “As we go through the ty baroque orchestra that performs several musical groups are open to people other than really accelerated times of rising temperatures, I started times a year. students. As a tuba player, if I weren’t here, using multiple motifs and intentionally having them step In 2013, Jones started working on her own I certainly would have given it up years ago on each other. I tried to make it sound really frantic.” composition, inspired by a YouTube video in because I wouldn’t have had an opportunity She also rewrote the music so it dies away toward the which a cellist demonstrated how much Earth’s to perform. finale. “I sort of strip out the chords and end up on a sin- temperature had been rising by scaling it into gle note at the end for the uncertain future.” How playing the tuba and conducting are not so different: pitch. “It was cool,” she says, “but it was just Inspired by her foray into composition and buoyed by The tuba is the bass line. It’s not necessarily what people are listening to the response (the Viola da Gamba Society of America has when they’re listening to a group. But to me, playing the bass line well already published the sheet music), Jones is currently and conducting a group have a lot in common. You have to be aware working with a movie composer/filmmaker to build a of the ensemble so you’re playing at the right volume, and you’re also compelling narrative for a performance that will blend leading the group and giving them cues in rhythm and in pitch. science and music to explore the implications of climate Read more about Caltech’s musicians and hear their change and what we can do to change that trajectory. music at magazine.caltech.edu/post/striking-a-chord

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